Another View: Civility Project is a matter of opinions

We’re all entitled to our opinions, and some opinions are strongly held. A strong civic culture can make a safe space for all but the most repugnant views.

We’re all entitled to our opinions, and some opinions are strongly held. A strong civic culture can make a safe space for all but the most repugnant views. Unfortunately, the fastest-growing forums for people to speak their mind are online free-for-alls that treat facts and lies as equals. Many have few or no rules for what’s said, creating an atmosphere of intimidation that turns off the shy, the mannerly and those demanding an intelligent conversation.

Some general-interest newspapers and magazines, as well as some very special websites and broadcasts, are the last refuge for standards. Without them, there would be few safe places for the public to express its views and intelligently address the dilemmas of the day.

The National Conference of Editorial Writers (www.ncew.org) plays an essential role in keeping the science and art of healthy public debate alive. (Its new president is The Providence Journal’s Froma Harrop, whose column appears regularly Saturdays in the Register Star.)

The NCEW’s members are editorial writers, editors, columnists, broadcasters, cartoonists and online professionals from across the U.S. and Canada and the ideological spectrum. Some work for the conservative Wall Street Journal, others for the liberal New York Times. They represent big publications — The Kansas City Star, Seattle Times, Dallas Morning News, Miami Herald — and small ones — Clarksville (Tenn.) Leaf-Chronicle and The Courier-Express in DuBois, Pa. Two members of the Rockford Register Star Editorial Board belong to NCEW. The broadcasting members come from, among other places, NPR, Sinclair Group, and WISC-TV in Madison, Wis.

Many newspaper readers do not understand the difference between editorials, which reflect the organization’s institutional viewpoint, and other parts of the commentary pages, which ideally contain a wide variety of opinions. Indeed, it is an extraordinary trait of American journalism that most newspapers routinely run opinions opposed to their editorials. The NCEW seeks to preserve that tradition.

The NCEW recently launched its Civility Project to help professional opinion writers and editors and the public navigate the rapids of new media. Should websites start requiring that all commenters (many now just using “screen names”) reveal their real identities? Are some opinions so beyond the pale that they should be banned? What about four-letter words? Are some passable and others not? Should opinions, whether online or in print, be much more carefully culled for factual inaccuracies?

The Civility Project’s director is Frank Partsch, who was editorial-page editor of the Omaha World-Herald for a quarter-century. We quote Mr. Partsch:

“Let’s be thinking about where we, individually, might draw the line between robust, hard-hitting, withering commentary and, on the other hand, cheap-shot, below-the-belt incivility. Most of us know that effectively scoring on a point of argument opens us to the accusation of mean-spiritedness. It comes with the territory, and a commitment to civility should not suggest that punches will be pulled in order to avoid such accusations.”

Online cowboys have long railed against the “mediators” of so-called mainstream media — we editors who pick and choose which opinions are worthy of dissemination. The mediators are hardly perfect in judgment, but they are becoming a last bulwark against a national scream fest, where the loudest, angriest and most outrageous opinions (sometimes heavily funded by economic interest groups) get the most attention; facts seem to matter less and less in the general din.

The NCEW deserves enormous credit for jumping into this fray. Its members and their standards stand between the civilized exchange of ideas and the abyss. Given the chaos of today’s media environment, the NCEW has its work cut out for it.

— The Providence Journal

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